Meet the food makers that think you don’t trust them

MariaLaMagna

If the head judge on “Top Chef” worries that the high-end food he buys isn’t always what it says on the wrapper, what hope do you have?

Perhaps little — but that’s the way the Parmesan crumbles these days.

“A lot of people are making claims that they’re selling organic, and they’re not; that they’re selling antibiotic-free meat, and they’re not,” said Tom Colicchio, founder of restaurants including New York’s Craft and Colicchio & Sons. “It’s just getting ridiculous.”

The market for high-end and artisanal food and drink has grown. Shoppers and diners are willing to spend more for foods that meet their standards and tastes. But are their efforts to learn about the source and quality of their foods wasted?

There’s often little way to be certain that a product is the real deal, as shown by recent high-profile examples — such as the supposedly pure Parmesan that was cut with fillers, or the “local” items on Florida restaurant menus that were anything but.

Wary of eroding customer trust, companies are now building systems of self-policing in which food producers — including makers of olive oil, honey, and cheese — create rules they hope will help them distinguish their products, bolster their businesses and show that they’re worth the extra money.

Unscrupulous companies “will cut around the edges” said Nora Weiser, executive director of the American Cheese Society. “When you’re trying to compete, it’s like being in the Olympics and someone’s doping.”

Customers expect more when they spend more

U.S. sales of specialty foods — what the Specialty Food Association calls the highest-quality products in their categories — were about $120 billion in 2015, up more than 20% from 2013.

Consumers have demanded more information about what they buy as interest in high-end food has grown. Nearly 70% of all consumers want food companies to tell them more about their products than they currently do; even more millennial consumers, more than 40% of which say they don’t trust large food manufacturers, feel that way.

Some food businesses, meanwhile, have come under scrutiny, accused of using tactics from sneaky labeling to mucking with ingredients to make their products seem more than they are.

The phenomenon can be found in restaurants as well as shop aisles. In an April series, Tampa Bay Times food critic Laura Reiley found that many Tampa-area restaurants claimed they were serving locally sourced meats, seafood and produce even as they bought it from as far away as the Indian Ocean. “If you eat food, you are being lied to every day,” Reiley wrote.

This happens in part because of a simple, if self-defeating, tendency: Studies show that consumers are more likely to think something tastes better and is higher quality when it costs more.

But it’s also a reflection of how food regulation works: While the Food & Drug Administration and Agriculture Department sets standards for foods — Parmesan, for example, must grate readily, and its solids must be at least 32% milk fat — the government is mainly concerned with food safety, in part because the sheer number of companies and artisans making and selling food across the country makes regulation difficult.

“If I know this is happening in my industry, how many other industries is this happening in that I don’t know about?” said Texas Beekeepers’ Association President Chris Moore, who also runs Moore Honey Farm in Kountze, Texas. “The general public can go to someone selling honey at a farmers market, and they can tell them anything they want.”

Industries move toward self-regulation

Worried that their business will be hurt by customer confusion and mistrust, some industries and companies are regulating themselves.

Arthur Schuman Inc., which makes cheese in Turtle Lake, Wis., and processes millions of pounds of it each year in New Jersey and Illinois, raised concerns about counterfeit Parmesan in 2015 and this year created a “Trust Mark” seal it now puts on one of its products; a company spokeswoman said it is currently adding the label to more. It hopes other companies will adopt the seal, though none currently do.

And two years, ago, Texas beekeepers started an initiative called Real Texas Honey in hopes of battling incidents in which filtered and imported honey is sold as unfiltered and local. They have applied for a USDA grant to help them create a labeling system, and are currently relying on referrals and in-person visits. (If they meet their standards, they go into a directory of recommended honey producers.)

Some producers have been doing this for even longer. The California Olive Oil Council, a nonprofit marketing and trade group, came together in 1998 to provide quality assurance to consumers buying olive oil produced in the state. Membership is voluntary, but 90% of the olive oil produced in California is made to its standards, earning it a special label.

Companies who want to use the label must sign several legally binding documents and have their oil assessed by an accredited chemistry laboratory; a panel then does a blind tasting and rules on whether the oil meets its standard.

“Early on, the message was, ‘If you want to put ‘California’ and ‘extra virgin olive oil’ on your label and have it be meaningful [companies must] support us in these very strict regulations and protocol,’” said Patricia Darragh, the Council’s executive director.

‘You should be asking more questions’

Not every company wants more regulation — in large part because following and enforcing rules costs money. When the FDA warned that using wooden boards to age cheese could be unsafe, a statement seen as a ban led to an outcry from cheesemakers, a White House petition, and concerns about resulting price increases.

And regulation driven entirely by industry participants poses its own potential problems, some experts say. Labels and directories like the ones Arthur Schuman and the Texas beekeepers are trying to create “don’t have any credibility unless there’s an independent third party to verify them,” said Mitch Weinberg, founder of supply chain and food fraud investigation company Inscatech.

Carla Martin, executive director of the Fine Cacao and Chocolate Institute, urges patient study, tasting and research as a way to determine quality when consumers are in a store. “It’s a lot like speaking a language or learning to play a sport,” Martin said. “The more time you invest in this, the more confident you will become.”

“You should be asking more questions and being somewhat cynical,” said Colicchio, who himself is willing to pay up for quality — the chickens he buys his family from a Long Island, N.Y., farm can cost $34. “I think you have to.”

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